


take my hand (take my whole life too)

by aureation



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: 4+1, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Song: Can't Help Falling in Love (Elvis Presley), all these little things, wholesome hours: on!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28501242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aureation/pseuds/aureation
Summary: four times william hawkes doesn’t notice kym ladell’s presence in his life, and the one time he does.
Relationships: William Hawkes/Kym Ladell
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	take my hand (take my whole life too)

**_1_ **

When Kym Ladell arrives on the precinct early that morning, she doesn’t expect to be seeing William Hawkes, hunched over his desk exactly the way he was the evening before as she left. She wants to assume that the Lieutenant had gone home over the night at some point, but looking at his uncanny unchangingness between the two different times, she cannot be quite too sure herself.

She closes the door of the office not-so-gently, yet he doesn’t seem to register her presence. _Huh._

Just to be sure that the man she’s seeing seated on William’s desk isn’t some sort of mannequin or a figment of her imagination, she makes her way towards his table and stood before it for a good while, scrutinizing the blonde. He does not look up, continuing his ritual of writing and pausing to think of the best (and in her opinion, most ridiculous) word to use in his report.

For a split second, she wonders: if she starts dancing in front of him, will he notice? Her bet’s on _no_ , but she isn’t too awake herself to test out her own hypothesis, so she lets it slide for now. Besides, in the small impossibility that he _does_ notice her antics, he’ll be irritated at her—and while it’s usually her breakfast menu to see the oh-so-composed William Hawkes lose his temper when it comes to her, she herself is not too ready to battle it out with the old man so early in the morning.

She walks a good few steps away from his table, before skidding to a halt again.

Her eyes drift to the pile of his paperwork that seems to be _incomplete_ , towering so high it casts shadows on his fair complexion, and the gears in her brain short-circuit momentarily. Since when does he have so much work to do, and why isn’t he getting it done, when he looks like he’s been living in the precinct the past few days?

 _This is payback for you always chiding me about never finishing my paperwork on time_ , she wants to taunt, but instead she bites her lower lip. She doesn’t like the feeling that settles in her chest upon that thought—and she doesn’t know quite exactly what drives her to walk back to his desk and… take some of the files off the never-depleting pile.

She successfully makes it back to her desk, and he doesn’t seem to notice.

To anyone it might be an unthinkable sight, but when Kym Ladell smiles at the papers laid across her desk, she feels an odd sense of contentment swelling within. She’s not too sure why herself; it is not uncommon knowledge that she despises the thought of more paperwork, and that she’ll rather go through ten times the amount of paperwork she already has than help her superior in any given way.

She’ll dwell on it when it bugs her more, she thinks. For now, she’s got an extra bunch of files to work on, so that she will do.

—

**_2_ **

She becomes increasingly open to the possibility that the Lieutenant did not go home at all the night before, when she seems him all too out of it during patrol hours.

And so he fails to notice the crowd, circling a man waving a gun, threatening everyone who comes closer with much panic. William will have walked through the crowd and broken that invisible safety bubble, if not for her pulling him back by the arm.

The look of confusion he gives her is that of a lost puppy, and pity bites softly into her heart.

She juts her head into the cause of the ruckus, a man holding a kneeling young man at gunpoint. Neither seems to be particularly content with the position they’re forced in, even the perpetrator himself.

Although William has always been better when it comes to confronting the criminals due to his incredible patience, she’s not too sure what he can, or _will_ do in such a lightheaded state. She takes a step forward, approaching the two men with hands lifted up in surrender.

“Sir, please put your gun down,” she warns with all the calm she can muster.

His hand on the gun remains as it is, shaking against the temple of his victim, who has been crying silent tears. “Don’t come closer!” he yells desperately. “I have to–I have to do this. Don’t–don’t come.”

“You don’t _have_ to do anything, sir.” Kym glances towards the crowd and waves her hand backwards, before focusing her attention back to the two men. “Are you being threatened to do this? We can help you if you let us know why you feel like you have to do this.”

The man shakes his head vigorously, mumbling incoherently, words unheard to anyone but himself. She takes a step closer, doing it as slow, as unnoticeably as possible, and she hears someone suck in a breath from behind her. She turns to see Lauren Sinclair, looking at her with worry and lips pursed, but she forces a nod—it is their duty, after all.

“Who is it, sir?” Kym presses, drawing out the words to not sound rushed. “We will deal with them, and make sure you are safe.”

“You can’t deal with them! You _never_ have,” he screams at her, and she understands. Everyone seems to have; she hears collective gasps from the crowd, before the murmurs begin to lapse over one another. “They—you don’t know the things they can do. No one gets away from them safe. I have to do this, or _I’ll_ die.” Tears have begun running down his cheeks as well; it is apparent that he doesn’t want to do this any more than the next person.

She lowers her hand to her front, trying to keep his eyes trained on her. “You don’t have to do this. We might not be able to catch them, like you said, but we will make sure they won’t harm you any further. You don’t–you don’t want to be like them, hm?”

He hesitantly shakes his head, then with more resolute. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I—” A sob broke out of his lips.

Taking a deep breath, she negotiates: “Sir, you can tell us everything that’s going on, and we’ll help you deal with the situation, yeah? You don’t have to do this. You always have a choice. We’ll make sure you’re safe from them, at the very least. But we need you to let the man go, and to put the gun down. Can you do that?”

For a while, he remains silent, still conflicted with himself. Eventually, he nods. “Okay… okay. I… okay. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

Kym casts a sideways glance, looking at Lauren from her peripheral vision. She nods in confirmation— _truth_ , and with Lukas Randall proceeds to walk towards the perpetrator. Kym follows suit, heading to the hostage, and crouch to look at him in the eye.

“Are you alright, sir?” Kym asks softly, and he nods shakily.

“T–thank you, officer,” the man squeaks. She pats his shoulder reassuringly.

After the mess is dealt with and they’ve returned to the precinct, Kym enters the office whining, the way she always does. “Ugh, I save the day like the hero I am, yet I come back only to be greeted by an ever growing mountain of paperwork. Life surely spares no mercy even for the great, does it?”

“I’ll… I’ll do the paperwork for the incident earlier,” a voice behind her spoke, so softly she’s momentarily surprised to hear it—she’s never heard William speak so softly with her before; he’s always been so… brash.

She finds that weird. She shakes her head, saying: “Eh, I’ll deal with it just fine. After all, you don’t know the incident as well like I do.”

He gives her a blank stare (which would have been a glare if he’s in his right mind, but he clearly isn’t). “I was there when it happened, Ladell.”

“And you almost walked through the entire thing, because you were so out of it. I bet there were plenty of things you missed. I’ll handle it, and you deal with your own work.”

“… If you insist,” he says at last, before heading to his desk, running a hand through his hair. Kym gives Lauren a questioning look, but she simply shrugs, looking just as lost and worried as she feels. In the end, she decides to drop it, heading for her own desk.

Nothing can stop the small smirk from growing on her face, but the expression is all too fond. She finds herself lucky that he’s in a state too hazy to pay her any mind.

—

**_3_ **

The sky finds it the perfect moment to pour, the temperature of the air significantly decreasing. Kym feels her own set of eyelids drooping as the comfortable ambience fills the room, though maybe it can be attributed to the fact that she went to the precinct earlier today.

Soon she stands up, stretching her arms and her back. She begins walking around the office, starting light chatter with the officers she passes by—some who accepts the nice break and continues the conversation with her, some others who mumble at her to get back to work. Nobody is quite too bothered, because of course, it’s not the first time the Sergeant has done such a thing. No one, normally, other than William Hawkes.

But today the easily riled up blonde remains stressfully ignorant to her disturbances. She hangs out around his desk for a couple of minutes, circling the desk and even poking through his things. The only response is a small “Go away, Ladell.”

Kym puffs out her cheeks in disappointment. “You’re no fun,” she groans, before picking up his empty mug of coffee and leaving him with his beloved paperwork.

That, too, escapes his notice.

She snickers. “I’m going to grab myself a nice mug of hot coffee,” she announces to no one in particular, before heading towards the break room.

In the break room she encounters a particular archivist. “Good evening, Ms. Ladell,” Kieran White greets with a small smile, filling his own mug of coffee.

“Kieran! Please, just call me Kym,” amiably she replies, “any friend of Lauren’s—though you’re a little more than just that, aren’t you?—is a friend of mine. Indeed, a good evening it is, and a wonderful weather to drink some coffee.”

Kieran chuckles nervously. “Well then, Kym. I must admit, I didn’t think you’d be drinking coffee at this hour. I know Lauren has extremely unhealthy habits, but I thought you’d be a little wiser in your coffee consumption.”

He hands the pot of coffee to her, and she takes it, filling William’s mug with the caffeine-infested liquid. “Awww, I see you’ve taken note of Lauren’s very unhealthy lifestyle as well! We do love an attentive and caring boyfriend. On that note—I hope you’re making her eat and sleep, because God knows whether she’s eaten anything properly in the past few weeks or so!” She puts down the coffee pot. “And I’m–well, I’m not exactly going to drink this coffee.”

The archivist raises his eyebrow. “Oh? What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m not going to prank anyone with it, if that’s what you were wondering,” she warns, and he lets out a chuckle. “No, it’s—well, Willame seems to be needing the coffee.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows shoot even higher upwards, she wonders how it’s still on his face (admittedly a fine one, and Lauren is one lucky bastard to have found him, for someone so against dating before).

Kym rolls her eyes. “He’s been out of it all day. Hell, why am I even doing this? I doubt he even realizes that he’s out of coffee, and I’d taken away the entire mug from him.”

“Well, we do love an attentive and caring girlfriend, do we not?” He casts her a perfect wink, and begins to head for the door, suppressing a growing grin.

Blood rises to her cheeks, tinting it a rosy bloom, and she starts sputtering over her own spit. “We–we’re not dating!”

“Could’ve fooled us, with the way you two act,” Kieran snorts, before leaving her and her rampant thoughts alone in the break room. Kym stands still dumbfounded, mouth gaping open and close like a blowfish.

“I— _what does that even mean_?” She shakes her head, before heading out herself, and walking back to the office. 

William, as she’s expected, doesn’t lift his head upon her entrance. She scoffs—she _wishes_ she has the amount of focus he has on his paperwork. She walks past his table conspicuously (not like he’ll pay any mind, anyway) and plants the mug where it was before, before heading back to her own desk.

She wills herself to focus on her paperwork, but her eyes flit to him every once in a while to see whether he’ll even notice.

He doesn’t; he picks up the mug, drinks it (and she wonders how he doesn’t question how the coffee has gotten much hotter than it was before), and returns to his paperwork as if nothing strange happened.

She was going to suppress a laugh, but she realizes that even if she laughs aloud, he won’t be bothered. So she does, and finds herself surprised when William _does_ notice, lifting up his head to look at her with a questioning look.

“Sorry,” she mutters, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Didn’t think you’d notice.”

William’s confusion doesn’t lessen one bit, and it makes her smirk wider. She drops her head, facing her papers instead, chuckling to herself lightly.

His gaze is still trained on her, but this she does not notice.

—

**_4_ **

The office meets a rare instance of silence after the sun sets. Kym too belatedly realizes that while bothering the other officers in the precinct earlier, she has forgotten that she has an extra pile of papers to do, and so she focuses her efforts on catching up with that, instead of annoying William, who seemed to still be as unresponsive as ever.

But even when she finishes her paperwork, somewhere between the eighth and the ninth hour, he has yet completed his. This concerns her deeply, and she begins clearing her throat to catch his attention.

He lifts his head to meet her gaze, in a lackadaisical manner. She doubts he will survive out there with such stagnant reflexes. “What is it?”

“Are you not done with your work?”

“No,” he replies curtly, before burying his head back in his paper.

 _So much for an argument—he can’t even last a whole conversation._ Kym sighs, looking back at her complete pile of paperwork, and begins fiddling with her pencil. Five seconds later, she gets bored and takes out a piece of paper, beginning to doodle on it.

It is not until she blinks when she realizes, the person she’s drawing is sitting right in front of her, an endless abstracted gaze upon the papers on his desk, and she jerks in surprise. She hasn’t even looked at him once during the time she doodled it—how did she—

Then again, he’s been in the exact same position since—ever. She looks at the paper wistfully.

Its original model speaks up: “Why are you still here? Go home, Ladell.”

Her head whips up to look at him, but he’s still doing his work. She sighs dramatically. “I’m working on the report for the earlier incident,” she lies. She doesn’t quite know why she does. Maybe she feels pity for the poor man and doesn’t want him to argue with her, when he’s already exhausted from his work.

“I told you I’ll do it,” William chastises her.

“And I told you why _I_ should do it.”

He looks up from his desk briefly to give her a deadpan stare, and she merely lifts an eyebrow. He sighs as well, and returns to his work, the office relapsing into silence.

She waits, and waits, until he finishes his work. By then, the time is past ten, and both are already all too tired. She does not say a word when she proceeds to tidy her belongings around the same time he does, and he does not question it. They leave the precinct together under the waning crescent—and though her house is miles from hers, she walks by his side to the direction of his apartment.

Again, she is glad that he doesn’t seem to question it—because if he does, he is not too sure what her answer will be.

—

[ **_+1_ ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSkHIv7GhOM)

Kym Ladell shivers under her thick coat, due to the especially rough winter night. She tries not to let it show, breathing as silently through her mouth because it hurt to breathe through her nostrils, shoulders raised in a weak attempt to conserve more body heat, with hands shoved down her pockets.

It doesn’t take long before she reverts to her rambunctious self, jumping and dancing around out of nowhere. William spares her a glance, but for once it does not hold the judgmental glint in his eyes that he reserves for the Sergeant.

She tries for a conversation anyway: “It’s a beautiful night, is it not? Look, you can even see the stars tonight.” She angles her head upwards, and William watches as snowflakes melt on her face, making it look like she’s been crying.

He snorts, but a small smile settles on his lips. “You’re probably mistaking snowfall for stars, Ladell. Of course you can see the snow in winter,” he notes. Upon realization, she blinks the snow out (quite literally, from her eyes), and looks back at him with a glare and a pout. “Same difference. Both are just as beautiful.

“How do you even mistake snowflakes, being swayed by heavy winds, for static stars—”

“I’ll have you know that stars _do_ move, Willame,” Kym retorts haughtily, jutting out her chin, “and at a much faster speed than—”

“Of course I know that, Ladell, but you can’t actually see them in motion because they’re like light ye—,” he counters in frustration, but pauses when he sees Kym grinning at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs faux-innocently. He gives her a blank stare, and she only grins wider.

Then he sighs. “I’ll never understand you, Ladell.”

“You can’t understand greatness because you’re _lame_ ,” she jokes, poking out her tongue. He brings a hand to his forehead, feeling his brain begin to pulse.

They continue to walk, Kym having calmed down from her earlier enthusiasm. At one point, she rubs her hands together rapidly for warmth, and William winces at the sound.

“Are your hands supposed to sound like sandpaper?” William asks with genuine concern, and he receives a glare in return.

“It’s just cold and my hands are normally already really dry,” she mutters in annoyance. He simply hums and nods in understanding.

Then he offers his hand to her.

When she sees it, she snaps her head to look at him, eyes wide in surprise. And though he himself has seen golden days, he has never quite seen someone radiate sunshine as brightly as Kym Ladell does, hazel eyes glittering gold under the gleaming moonlight.

She takes his hand in hers, and he intertwines their fingers together, before putting it inside his own coat pocket. Kym’s eyes are still flickering between their hands and his eyes, lost as to why he’s doing such a… bizarre thing. He does not bother her with an explanation, simply continuing to walk as they are, down the paved road.

“I–why?” she manages eventually. He looks at her through the corner of his eye briefly; her face is flushed in pink, and she has never looked so small, so adorable.

He has to take his eyes away from her, because he knows he’ll crumble if he is to dwell on the sight. “You’ve done a lot for me today. It’s only fair that I repay you somehow.”

At this, Kym chuckles sheepishly. “That was just one case, Will. Don’t get too bothered about it.”

“I’m pretty sure you took at least six of my files,” he throws casually, causing her to skid to an abrupt halt.

“Uh, you saw that?”

“You’re really the least inconspicuous person alive, Kym. That is also why I doubt you can be a spy, like Lune. You’re–your presence is too glaring.”

Her head shrinks even further into her neck, which he didn’t think was possible. “I only did that because I thought you wouldn’t notice.”

“And, you know, if you wanted to refill my coffee without me noticing, you should’ve refilled it with lukewarm coffee.”

“The rain makes it perfect for hot coffee!” she argues, but her face falls when he looks at him again, perhaps because his smile is way too fond to get mad at.

“That, I won’t disagree with.”

“Wait, so—” she jerks her hand out of his pocket and his grasp, and he looks at her, startled. “So you _knew_ I did those things, and you didn’t say so much of a _thank you_?”

He looks into her eyes solemnly and says, “Thank you, Kym. Genuinely.”

She rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t have even said it if I didn’t tell you about it. Your apology is overdue, Hawkes. Don’t even bother.” She turns and begins to walk in the other direction, the direction of her own house, but he stops her by grabbing her by the arm gently.

“I—” He then lets go of her arm, because he knows she is right. “I know I’m late. I was late, too, in realizing those things you did for me—I only realized you took my paperwork when I checked and noticed that the pile had decreased, and yours had so much more than before arrived. I only found out you refilled my mug of coffee because it was hotter than when I filled it. I only noticed you were waiting for me to finish my work after I finished and _you_ stood up as well, and even then I wasn’t sure. And _God_ , I hope I’m not late about this too—”

He gulps, unable to force the words out of his mouth, his eyes trained on the ground. Kym raises an eyebrow. “About?”

“I… like you,” he says, voice shying into a whisper. He hears her breath hitch. “Like, _really_ really like. Like _love_ like. Like—”

“God, _stop_ ,” Kym yells, and William pauses in surprise. When he looks at her, her face is even redder than it is before. He’s never seen her this flustered before, and he doesn’t know whether he’s done the right thing or not.

After what feels like an eternity, she finally breathes out, “I–I like you too, Willame. Even though you’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met. Like _love_ like.”

“And I, you, even though you’re the most frustrating person I’ve ever met,” he says just as quietly, as tenderly, as lovingly. And when he sees the brilliant smile that settles on her face, he does not regret having spoken out his feelings.

He extends his hand again, and she puts her hand in his. He lifts it to his lips and presses it against them softly.

_“For I can’t help falling in love with you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> hello! thank you for reading this fic! ♡ i genuinely love ph so much and i'm especially inspired to write by the amazing writers of this fandom! my 2021 resolution is to be a better writer and be more confident in my writing skills, so i'm hoping through posting fics i can develop as a writer. it would be greatly appreciated if you guys could leave comments as feedback to let me know how i'm doing, but if not, that's fine too!
> 
> hope you guys are having a great day and a great year! much love, aurora ☀︎☽
> 
> p.s. title of fic is from **can't help falling in love** by elvis presley.


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